5-20-08 Night at the Oval

Another Tuesday night, another windy back stretch. Winds were between 15-20 mph for the races tonight, making it hard to be out in front by yourself. B race again as there were alot of people there tonight, and also some new faces which is good. 10 lap race, we all just kinda rode the first couple laps together and I was waiting for an attck, but again noone would go, so I went, and had a guy that caught on to me, but didn't realize it until I sat up for a second and noticed he was on th eother side of me, a couple other guys chased us down and caught up with us going into the next lap, 3 to go and another attack from one of the other guys, and I was able to get their wheel, sprint at the end, came in 3rd on that race. 2nd race was 8 laps, same thing noone would atack so this time I waited till I had a tailwind and went off the front, took a couple guys with me, but I was feeling it after the counter attack and fell off a little bit. Worked my way back into 5th wheel going into the last lap, set up for the sprint and took 3rd again. Next they divided us up into 2 group, the old guys vs. the young guys, and what they did was put one woman on each team, and the goal was to see how fast we could get her around the last lap, so the older guys went first, and you could hear them talking strategy the entire time they were riding. Us younger guys had a plan all layed out, so we get to the line, et to the 3rd lap, and since you had everything from Cat 2's to 5's and everything in between it didn't work out for us as planned. We did however end up winning by .8 seconds though. Next was a granny gear race around the 1/2 mile track, didn't finish too bad, but spinning out at 22 mph in a 39x25 is a killer, then for the final race we did a big gear race, but you have to start with both feet on the ground. I got clipped in pretty good, but for some reason my chain didn't wanna stay on and kept jumping over the big ring so I had to get that back on 3 times, so by the time I got going I was so far behind it was not worth it. I did catch back up and wasn't last, but man did that suck. Time to adjust the front deraileur now. Ended up taking 2nd Place overall in the B group and also 2nd Place in the Cat 5's. Also there are no pictures this week as the wife and kids had a chorus concert to got to at the school.